Caning

The BBC ran this story this morning, concerning a class incident in Taiwan that was caught on film by a student using his cellphone video camera. In the clip, a young female Taiwanese teacher is seen to be smacking the palms of a boy with a wooden stick who, reportedly, handed his homework in ten days after the deadline. The boy was then made to turn around as the teacher smacked his arse in a similar fashion. I tried to find the clip so I could see this for myself, but you can imagine the results of a google search with a search-string of words like ‘caning’ ’school’ and ‘video’.

The whole thing seems to be causing quite a stir. Many feel this to be a primitive, retrograde act that should be outlawed as soon as possible, along with most other ‘developed’ nations.

“Corporal punishment has been a cultural practice in Taiwan. But we believe schools and homes are the most important environment for kids to grow up and we need to eliminate this practice,” said Guan Bi-ling, a legislator from the governing Democratic Progressive Party, who has introduced the amendment.
“Many countries worldwide have banned corporal punishment in schools by law – including China. We think Taiwan is an advanced country, and we shouldn’t trail behind”, she said.

But others insist that it is a necessary punative measure and even imply that parents not only tolerate, but activley encourage it.

“Some people say we should have considered the position of the teacher,” said Kim Wang, of the Humanistic Education Foundation, a non-governmental group which is pushing for a ban of corporal punishment in schools.
“Other parents said they favoured teachers using that kind of method to discipline their children.”

As for me, I am appalled and disgusted by this video clip. It sickens me to the pit of my stomach that this kind of blatant student espionage is allowed to happen in this day and age. The boy that filmed this event must be punished. His cellphone should be siezed and a ban on all similar devices in the classroom should be initiated and enforced as soon as possible. We cannot allow our students to film the practice of corporal punishment in schools in this manner. The teacher waited ten days for this boys homework. TEN days! If it had been me I would have done it after 2 hours. After all, Taiwan kids have it easy here right? Short school hours, no tests, no pressure, no out-of-school cramming in early-morning or late-evening bushibans, no homework, no obsessive parents who lock them in their bedrooms after 8pm and force them into an unwanted path of academic hellfire and brimstone.

We need to toughen-up these lazy slackers.

Squats

Warning: if you are eating, it might be better not to read this post for the moment. Getting on for a full year now, and only today did I have my first experience of the Taiwanese ’squat-toilet’. I was enjoying some lunch in a choa-fan bar in the university district near my home when my belly made a desparate noise and I began to feel the ominous stirring of my bowels. I ignored it because I am very finicky about using public conveniences (in fact I usually refuse to use any toilet that is not my own), not because I think Taiwanese toilets are particularly dirty (they are not), but because I behave in the same manner anywhere, including the UK. But this faint movement soon turned into a cheek-clenching desparation and I realised that I must find the nearest pan, and double quick, or the consequences would be too dire to write about, even in this decadent, ‘no subject is too disgusting’ weblog. Now, in Taiwan there are usually urinals and squats (see picture) in every convenience, and my bowelatory actions are usually habitual enough (once a day at 30mins after getting out of bed sharp) for me to shun these little troughs in the ground, but today I was caught short. I ran upstairs to the toilet, opened the door and froze at the sight. For a second, the horror of the idea caused me to consider my options (which were, realistically, the squat or my pants), but my belly was telling me that it was happening now. RIGHT now. So the decision making process lasted for maybe a tenth of a second and I pulled down my trousers just milliseconds before my arse exploded into, over, and around the well as I perched uncertainly in a crouch hoping that my trousers had escaped any shrapnel-fire.

The blessed relief of excavation lasted a nano-second and straight away I reconned the immediate area and myself, looking for tell-tale splatterings and droplets of bodily waste. I had been lucky, thank the gods; I left my scooter at home and would be able to walk back without a trace of the incident anywhere on my body. The squat area, though, had not been so fortunate and I began the unpleasant task of cleaning the floor of my own mis-shot crap before washing my hands and walking sheepishly out of the room to the restaurant where K and I left right away. The incident repeated itself 5 minutes later as I arrived at my house…except this time I had the luxury of reading a book, listening to music and taking as much time as I damn well felt like, and on a real Westernized 2 foot-high bowl with a proper ringseat and everything.

I am glad to have had the experience of the Taiwanese squat, but it is not an experience that I care to repeat. Ever.

Children

I love my job. I am one of these people who looks forward to going to work. I am a pedantic irritating geek who cannot stop correcting other’s spelling or grammatical mistakes. I have no tolerance for ‘SMS’-speak and I cannot abide the lazy, contracted pigeon English that my language is becoming. And don’t give me any crap about the constant linguistic evolution and dynamism of lingual entity, you are preaching to the converted. Growth and progress are one thing; de-evolution is something else entirely.
I get paid to explain words to classes full of (mostly female) students; my boss actually gives me money to correct their mistakes.
The world of ESL (English as a Second Language) is a strange eclectic place full of rejects, bums, dropouts, social misfits, wanderers and outcasts. There is an old addage in my line of work that ‘people become English Teachers when they have fucked-up their lives’, and there is more than a grain of truth to this saying. Here in Taiwan there are all kinds of failed businessmen, hopeless itinerants, drapetomaniacs, dromomaniacs, and the vast swathes of the terminally unemployable (of which I count myself as a member). We are employed on the basis that we can speak English. My sole qualification is that I speak my native language. It is a job that anyone can do, I have no special skills, no abilities that set me apart from others, no speciality, or any other kind of occupational redeeming features of any kind. There is no real oppourtunity for promotion (aside from running a school), I do not get holiday pay, do not work ‘regular’ hours and my schedule changes from month-to-month.

However, I cannot imagine doing anything else. I live on a tropical island, pay 6% tax, eat out every night and never wake up in the mornings dreading my day.

Well, except for Saturdays. Saturday is my day of hell, my nightmare. I was beginning to hate Friday nights too, just because they are so close to Saturdays, and my Sundays were often ruined in the aftermath of the Saturday that preceeded them. 10am, a class of 15 eight to thirteen year-olds who are undisciplined, naughty and EVIL, just evil. 3.30pm, a class of one, or sometimes two, even younger students who often cry and wet their pants. They hide my tea, steal my marker pens and the A/C remote contol. They call me ‘big-nosed westerner’, they refuse to do what I say and demand to play games for the whole of each 80 minute lesson. They constantly demand attention, expect to be entertained and they piss me off from start to finish. I hate them, all of them. Not because I hate Taiwanese children; they are actually much better behaved than English kids, I just hate children.
They don’t want to be there and are not at all interested in learning English, it is only because their parents want them to have an early grasp of the language.
I am an English teacher, not a goddamned play leader. I am not a babysitter and I dont have a clue what to do if a child cries or shits himself. I am a VERY bad teacher of children. I will not even write about some of the terrible methods I have used to bribe kids into being quiet and doing some work, I would be too ashamed.

But, thank God, Jesus, Allah and Jehovah, I have taught my last saturday lesson. After over 3 months of complaining (both by me to my boss, and by the parents of the kids I teach to my boss), I have been taken off the teaching equivalent of spud-bashing. Now I am strictly a Monday to Friday boy, teaching only adults who want to be in class. No more shitty desparate days when I count the seconds to the end of the lesson. No more horrifying moments when, with 45 minutes still left, I stand there and think, ‘what the HELL am I going to teach these small people?’.
And no more shitty pants and screaming tears (at leat not at work).
Rejoice with me my friends, today my life got even better.